Banishment to the House of Peers has had one good
effect upon Sir Stafford Northcote. It has diminished hi fear of making a joke in public. By nature one of the most numorous of men, he has been remarkable among English public speakers for an avoidance of humour so strict that it suggested some inner fear. Was he afraid, if he let himself go ever so little, of talking rank Whiggery P We do not know ; but it is certain that, speaking at Aberdeen, which is not a place where jocularity is in the air, he delivered himself of one or two quite successful jokes. His notion that he dreaded the next Liberal Ministry, because, as every one knew, when you saw the young moon with the old moon in its arms bad weather was sure to follow, was felicitous ; and so was his answer to the charge that the Egyptian policy was due to the Tory leaders five years ago,—' You might as well trace the original sin of that policy back to Adam and Eve.' The say- ing, too, that "people form a different idea of the whip accord- ing as they are at the handle-end or the lash-end of it," is worthy of Artemus Ward. Despite these gleams, however, both the speeches of Tuesday were very cloudy. All Lord Iddesleigh could say was that times were serious, that Tories wanted what Mr. Gladstone said he wanted ; but that he should like to see detailed plans. County Government was a complex subject. The free sale of land was very difficult, though Lord Cairns had done something towards it. Reform of Procedure often meant the silencing of the minority; and so on, and so on. There was not one sentence indicating what the Tory Party would do, though there was an assurance that they would not disintegrate the kingdom.
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